Chapter 42: Chapter 32: Chaisi: The Illusion Seeking a Path

When Chaisi was a child, Uncle Kai would sometimes take him camping in the mountains.

Deep in the mountains, far from the sleepless clamor of Blackmoor City, the world was dark and silent. Aside from the red glow of a campfire, all he could see were the stars overhead. He had never seen such a pure night, as if even the forest had dissolved into the void of space.

Uncle Kai taught him to recognize the constellations, softly connecting the dots between the myriad stars to form the shape of a dipper, a great bear... The mountain nights were cold, and Uncle Kai always brought two extra blankets. The young Chaisi would sit beside him, wrapped snugly in a blanket, his gaze drifting through the cosmos.

Right now, he was once again reminded of those lines connecting the stars.

Though far less beautiful than a starry sky, a few points of light seemed to be emerging from the subway conductor before him, points that could be connected to form a shape.

With this vague shape, he formed a hypothesis.

One: "A woman’s body was found after the subway stopped running." This was a fact, from a recent news report.

Two: "Someone was attacked after a late-night shift." Chaisi wasn’t sure if this was true. It could have been just one of the hundreds of daily news items in Blackmoor City.

Three: "A female detective and a male professor team up to investigate serial cases." A TV show.

And there they were—the three elements that formed the rumor.

’So it seems... my appearance on the subway was like a sudden bolt of lightning, illuminating something in the conductor’s mind.’

Before seeing Chaisi, the subway conductor showed no signs of the "paranoia" or "fear" he’d claimed to feel. When he was walking alone through the empty subway car, he was even humming.

But the moment he saw a tall man holding a weapon, the conductor had clearly lost his ability to distinguish fact from fiction. The three points above were rapidly pieced together, and in the span of a single breath, the rumor of a "recent subway serial killer" was born.

The interesting part was that as he blurted out the rumor, the conductor himself wholeheartedly believed the very tale he had just created, even fearing for his own life because of it.

’...So this is how a "rumor" Illusion works?’

’It combines and adapts raw information, causing the finished rumor to spill from a person’s mouth... That’s just the first step. To understand the rest, I’ll probably have to get my hands on the Illusion itself.’

’No, that’s not right. Perhaps I should say this is one of its modes of operation.’

’From all the signs, the subway conductor is just a database containing the necessary key information, a mouth to speak the words. He’s completely unaware of how he’s been influenced. It’s hard to imagine Westley allowing an Illusion to manipulate him, rather than the other way around.’

’There must also be a way to actively use it, to create rumors intentionally. But that’s not the most pressing issue right now.’

The most important issue right now was getting the Illusion in his hands.

Chaisi stared at the conductor’s cheek. He’d seen it several times now—a bulge, as if pushed out by the man’s tongue, that would appear and vanish in an instant.

"Spit out what’s in your mouth."

The conductor froze. "In my mouth? There’s nothing in here."

Chaisi just looked at him without speaking.

"Really, there’s nothing. I just have a habit of pushing my tongue against the inside of my cheek." Under Chaisi’s gaze, the conductor grew flustered and said placatingly, "If you don’t believe me, I’ll open my mouth. Look—"

Chaisi unhappily peered into the fleshy red cavity. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He’d seen more than his share of people’s insides. Though he was used to it, he still found them slick and unsightly.

A person’s mouth was a strange thing. Staring at it for too long made him think of alien creatures—the trembling red throat, the fuzzy tongue, always sliding and rolling about in a glistening layer of liquid, as if they had a will of their own.

But no matter how unpleasant they looked, they weren’t an Illusion. Aside from the things a person’s mouth was supposed to have, there was nothing extra in the conductor’s.

Of course, Chaisi hadn’t expected the Illusion to be spat out so easily, so coming up empty wasn’t a disappointment. After all, how could someone not notice if something was actually in their mouth? Not even Ivan could secretly stuff something into a person’s mouth.

’I don’t know what form the Illusion takes, but if it’s hidden inside his body, getting it out will probably mean spilling some blood and getting my hands dirty... A subway car being used for backup isn’t the ideal place. Like the conductor said, someone might be coming soon.’

Chaisi grabbed him by the collar. Just as he was about to haul him up, the conductor seemed to realize something and began to struggle violently, kicking and shouting, "Where are you taking me?"

He was a heavy, stout man. Anyone else might have struggled to subdue him. But the instant Chaisi felt him move, he had already released his grip. At the same time, he delivered a sharp kick to the man’s ankle. The conductor’s cry of pain had barely escaped his lips when Chaisi’s T-rod buried itself deep in his gut, knocking the breath, balance, and strength right out of his body. He crumpled silently to the floor.

The conductor didn’t even make it all the way to the ground before Chaisi grabbed the back of his clothes and lifted him like a sack of groceries.

This sack of groceries was just a bit large, its legs dragging limply on the floor.

"I’m very interested in this rumor business," Chaisi said as he dragged him forward, his tone almost conversational. "I just want to talk. Whether we talk while you’re in one piece or missing a few limbs is up to you."

The conductor was struggling to breathe, able to manage nothing more than intermittent, muffled groans. Chaisi decided to take that as his consent.

He had dragged the man a few more steps before he could faintly make out a few words from within the groans. Chaisi stopped walking.

He glanced out the window. It didn’t seem like anyone would be coming down the dark, silent subway tunnel anytime soon.

"What did you say?" he asked, leaning down and prompting him in an almost gentle voice. "Speak a little clearer."

The conductor mumbled something else, his voice extremely slurred.

Chaisi strained his imagination but could only make out a few bizarre words, something like "wire," "broken," and "power." As for what it meant, he couldn’t piece it together at all.

He was about to ask the conductor to repeat himself when a thought suddenly struck him.

’I know how much force I use, which is why I went easy on him just now. Besides, a blow to the gut shouldn’t leave someone unable to speak clearly after more than ten seconds.’

’Thinking about it... did the conductor even open his mouth when he spoke just now?’

As if pricked by the thought, he flung the conductor away. The man tumbled to the ground like a discarded bundle.

The man’s face flashed upwards before rolling toward the floor. In that brief instant, Chaisi saw it clearly: the conductor’s face was stretched taut, his lips pressed together so tightly they were almost invisible. It was as if he were wrestling with something, a vein popping out on his jaw and pulsing its way toward his temple from the effort of clenching his teeth.

His eyes were rolled back in his head, as if he were contemplating a deeply terrifying problem that only grew more frightening the less he understood it.

A moment ago, he was afraid of Chaisi, words spilling from his mouth. But now his lips were sealed shut, and he seemed to be afraid of something new.

In the next second, Chaisi understood the source of his fear.

The conductor’s head hit a handrail. The simple impact seemed to loosen whatever had been holding him so tense.

He didn’t open his mouth, but from between his sealed lips, a human voice spoke again, much clearer this time: "In the car... the light... wire, it’s broken, falling down..."

If Chaisi had realized what was happening even a blink of an eye later, he would have been electrocuted by the live wire that swung down from the ceiling. As it was, he only just managed to dodge it at the last possible moment, slamming into a nearby seat. He watched a shower of crackling sparks shoot across the floor in front of him, the embers slithering like a snake.

’Is this Illusion protecting itself?’

The thought flashed through Chaisi’s mind.

The conductor instinctively covered his head and flinched. The wire fell to the floor without touching him, then bounced back up, swinging through the air toward Chaisi again.

The car wasn’t spacious, and the spot where the panel had come loose and the wire had fallen was right in the middle. A live, wildly sparking wire was tricky enough to handle. But as Chaisi threw his T-rod to bat the sparking end of the wire back a few feet, he heard the voice from the conductor’s cheek again.

"Want to go home,"

Hearing it now, he realized the voice sounded nothing like the conductor’s. It was speaking hurriedly, indistinctly. "Want to go home... the Path... the Path a person can take to the Nest—"

For a moment, Chaisi thought the wire had hit him.

A tingling numbness spread through every pore of his body, and he didn’t dare to move, as if afraid to startle the voice into silence. The scar on the back of his right hand awakened, tightening and pulling at the skin.

Chaisi stood frozen in front of the seats, one hand still gripping the plastic seat back. It was as if the entire world had faded from his consciousness, leaving only the voice from beneath the conductor’s cheek. He was back in the silent, black mountains of his childhood. But this time, in the darkness, he could only see a single star.

"...There isn’t one," said the voice from under the conductor’s cheek.

The wire leaped back into the air. A string of sparks traced an arc and landed at Chaisi’s feet.

He heard his heart THUD against his ribs. Unable to break free from its cage, it slid back into the black depths.

In the dead silence, he realized he had taken a step forward. His legs were stiff, his fingers clutching the conductor’s chest, but his hand felt impossibly distant.

This whole meaningless body felt distant.

"A resident,"

As Chaisi yanked the conductor to his feet, making him stumble unsteadily, the voice came again from his sealed mouth. "The Path to the human world... there is one... a resident, one."

The conductor’s ragged breathing, the hum of the subway car’s ventilation system, the CRACKLE of the live wire... It was as if a floodgate had been opened, and all the sounds and sensations of the world rushed back into Chaisi’s consciousness.

"Make it shut up," Chaisi ground out four words at the conductor, his teeth clenched.

After those four words, his peripheral vision caught something. Ahead of them, a dark glass window was bending inward, like a piece of cloth being pushed up by a colossal object.